Evelyn Grant Duff

Sir Evelyn Mountstuart Grant Duff KCMG (9 October 1863 – 19 September 1926) was a British diplomat who was stationed in Iran at a key moment, and was ambassador to Switzerland.

He was the second son of M.E. Grant Duff (later Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff). He passed the Preliminary Examination for the Civil Services in 1883^[1] and entered the Diplomatic Service in 1888.^[2] He served in Rome, Tehran, St Petersburg, Stockholm and Berlin before a post in London 1899–1903.

He was Secretary of Legation in Tehran 1903–06.^[3] In the summer of 1906 there was no minister (ambassador) in post – the previous minister, Sir Arthur Hardinge, had left in 1905 and the new minister, Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, although appointed in December 1905,^[4] did not leave England until September 1906^[5] – so Grant Duff was the senior British diplomat in Tehran when, during the Persian Constitutional Revolution, about 12,000 men took sanctuary (bast) in the gardens of the British Legation in what has been called a 'vast open-air school of political science' studying constitutionalism.^[6] The Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, was outraged by Grant Duff's hospitality towards the bastis which, however, inadvertently expedited the Constitutional Revolution.^[7]

Grant Duff had already been appointed to be Councillor at the Embassy in Madrid^[8] and he took up that post in late 1906. While in Madrid he negotiated the purchase of land at the corner of calle de Núñez de Balboa and calle de Hermosilla for a British Embassy Church. Building did not start until 1923, and it was dedicated as the Church of St George in 1925.^[9]

In 1910 Grant Duff was appointed Minister to Venezuela, but he did not take up the post; he was Consul-General to the Kingdom of Hungary, in Budapest, 1911–13^[10] before his final post as British Envoy to the Swiss Confederation, 1913–16.^[11]

He was appointed CMG in 1911^[12] and knighted KCMG in 1916 on the termination of his mission in Berne.^[13]

In 1900 he married Edith Florence Bonham, elder daughter of Sir George Bonham, 2nd Baronet (who was British Envoy to the Swiss Confederation, 1905–09). She was appointed a Lady of Grace of the Order of St John of Jerusalem in 1916^[14] and CBE in 1918 as "Founder and Organiser of the Bread Bureau for Prisoners of War."^[15] She founded the "British Legation Red Cross Organization" through which the many British expatriates in Switzerland helped wounded soldiers in French and British hospitals.^[16]

References

• GRANT-DUFF, Sir Evelyn, Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2007, accessed 12 April 2012
• Grant Duff, Sir Evelyn Mountstuart, Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, 15 December 2002
• Sir Evelyn Mountstuart Grant Duff on thepeerage.com, page 17193

1. The London Gazette, 12 October 1883
2. The London Gazette, 8 June 1888
3. The London Gazette, 18 September 1903
4. Diplomatic Appointments, The Times, London, 9 December 1905, page 11
5. Court Circular, The Times, London, 6 September 1906, page 8
6. Abrahamian, Ervand, Iran Between Two Revolutions, Princeton University Press, 1982, p.84
7. British influence in Persia, 1900-21, Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, 23 February 2012
8. The London Gazette, 22 May 1906
9. Grapevine, Summer 2009, The Anglican/Episcopal Church of St George, Madrid
10. The London Gazette, 3 February 1911
11. The London Gazette, 1 August 1913
12. Supplement to The London Gazette, 2 January 1911
13. The London Gazette, 8 September 1916
14. The London Gazette, 14 July 1916
15. Supplement to The London Gazette, 4 June 1918
16. Picot, Henry Philip, The British interned in Switzerland, Edward Arnold, London, 1919